This invention relates generally to determining user liveness, and more particularly, to methods and systems for determining user liveness as the result of detecting user eye blinks.
Users conduct transactions with many different entities in person and remotely over the Internet. Transactions may be network-based transactions for purchasing items from a merchant web site or may involve accessing confidential information from a website remotely over the Internet. Entities that own such websites typically require successfully identifying users as the result of an authentication transaction before permitting users to conduct the transactions.
During remotely conducted network-based authentication transactions, users typically interact with an authentication system to prove their claim of identity. Such interactions generally provide a claim of identity and biometric data captured from the user to the authentication system. However, imposters have been known to impersonate users during authentication transactions by providing a false claim of identity supported by fraudulent biometric data in an effort to deceive an authenticating entity into concluding that the imposter is the person they claim to be. Such impersonations are known as spoofing.
Impostors currently use many methods to obtain or create fraudulent biometric data that can be submitted during authentication transactions. For facial biometric data imposters have been known to obtain two-dimensional pictures of others, from social networking sites, and present the obtained pictures to a camera during authentication to support a false claim of identity. Moreover, imposters have been known to eavesdrop on networks during legitimate network-based authentication transactions to surreptitiously obtain genuine biometric data of users. The imposters then use the obtained biometric data for playback during fraudulent authentication transactions. Such fraudulent biometric data are known to be difficult to detect using known liveness detection methods. Consequently, accurately conducting network-based authentication transactions with biometric data captured from a user at a remote location depends on verifying the physical presence of the user during the authentication transaction as well as accurately verifying the identity of the user based on the captured biometric data. Verifying that the biometric data presented during a network-based biometric authentication transaction conducted at a remote location is from a live person at the remote location, is known as liveness detection or anti-spoofing.
Known methods of liveness detection may not detect spoofing attempts that use high definition video playback to present fraudulent biometric data, and therefore do not provide high confidence liveness detection support for entities dependent upon accurate biometric authentication transaction results.